KidPad and children cooperation

On Monday lecture presented KidPad one of the scenarios. I became interested in the subject and I became acquainted with Hanna Nieminen Master's thesis. I also began think about challenges of children´s cooperation.

KidPad is a collaborative story authoring tool for children. It provides basic drawing functionality on a zooming canvas enabled. Children can create hyperlinks between drawings or objects on the canvas. KidPad uses local tools that can be picked up, used and dropped anywhere on the drawing surface. KidPad`s tools have in three toolbox, where every tool has own place. If multiple USB mice are connected to the computer each mouse will control a tool in KidPad, making it possible to let several children simultaneously create a story together. Two or several co-mouse brings additional features in some of the tools. (1)

KidPad supports collaboration between children because it can be used with multiple mice on the same computer. Certain tools in KidPad encourage collaboration because they enable two children to perform a task that they would be unable to perform alone. (1) Children`s co-operative interaction (between) the support to increase their the level of commitment, activeness and motivation. Kidpad is a way to help children to commit themselves to computer-based learning activities.

It appears from the investigation that age of preschool children can be quite self-centered and therefore the design with age of six is very challenging. They have difficulties in building new ideas to the old ideas on what other children are presented. Nieminen got good researches in cooperation of children with KidPad. When the Children were intention to draw something constructive and to test different tools, they often focused on drawing their own drawings. Five group of ten were able to some kind of cooperate in kindergarten of Rahola. Three pairs even designed carefully to what parts of the drawing, the second child is doing. Some Children invented to share the screen in half. Then both children had their own half, where other child may not draw. In This situation can’t talk about children´s cooperation because they don’t draw together picture. Children were very accurate their own works and own half of the drawing area. When one of the children drew the other side, child became angry and demanded a second child soon erasing its. (2) This research results shows that cooperation isn’t always easy although we have good tools.

References:

(1) http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/kiddesign/kidpad.shtml

(2) http://www.cs.uta.fi/research/theses/masters/Niemi_Hanna.pdf